Isaac Jacob Truax
Old Truax Burial Ground
showing graves of Isaac Sr. (right)
and Jr. (left) |
Isaac Truax was a brother of Abraham J. and Elias Truax, and one of the more colourful characters in the family. He owned a tavern on the Old King's Highway between Schenectady and Albany, in the heart of the Albany Pine Bush. The area was notorious as a lair for fur smugglers, brigands and, during the Revolution, Tory sympathisers. Isaac was no exception. His tavern was a popular meeting place for Loyalists, and his son Jacob, also a tavenkeeper on the road, managed to get himself arrested for his resistance to the Rebel cause. When he was confronted by a group intending to question him on his position, he fought them off with a tomahawk, bragging that he was "no Tory, but a man for the King". He was subsequently arrested, but his father Isaac bailed him out, and he apparently disappeared back into the Pine Bush wilderness.
Isaac's tavern had always had a less than savoury reputation. Rumours flourished of imprudent guests being robbed and murdered in the night, their bodies never to be found. A recent excavation of the tavern site seems to have borne this out - several human skeletons were found buried in what was once the cellar floor! A more conventional graveyard still exists in the woods behind the tavern site, where Isaac, his wife, son and grandson are buried. The oldest stone belongs to Maria Wyngaard, wife of Isaac J. Truax, and is dated May 10th, 1802.
Truax / Jaques / Holding Family Album
Jennifer's Genealogy Page